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An Advent Sermon Series: The Relationships of Christmas Past, Present, and Future (Genesis 44-45)
The Relationships of Christmas Past
Genesis 44:30-44
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace of God our Father and our Lord Jesus convince you of the healing that is indeed happening in your life, and in the lives of those you knew in Christmases past…
Haunted
I can imagine, as Judah stands before the brother he does not recognize, the heartache that he feels. His heart and soul flashbacks to the look in his father’s eyes when they told him of Joseph’s death. Of watching his dad weep for months,
How it must have ate him up, even though he knew his brother probably wasn’t dead, but simply a slave somewhere.
Still, he had to look down, and see his father, wracked with tears, and live with his father’s overprotective nature toward Joseph’s younger brother, the only joy this broken man had…
Judah then considers having to break the news to his father, that his other son would be lost to him as well. His heart breaks, as guilt and shame have so weakened him, he realizes he can’t go back, he can’t watch his father die, because of the sin he has committed.
Surely he is haunted far more than Bob Marley or the most of the ghost of Christmas past ever could.
Our Relationships of Christmas Past
For many of us, the holidays are a challenge. We miss many dear friends and family. Some are memories form our youth, like those we looked up to have past away, some of them decades ago.
Others are missing for a different reason.
Our sin.
Maybe we didn’t sell them into slavery, but the effect is much the same. We never, ever, want to bump into each other, for the sin that divides us is too grievous. Like Judah, thinking of the pain he caused his father, (not even thinking of Joseph) we can’t live with it. I can’t imagine bearing up with that kind of pain for decades…
Or can I?
I think back to the relationships of Christmases past, and know the absence of lives that brought joy, people I had fun with, that won’t be there this year without a miracle. If I think about it, I understand all to well the pain that Judah felt, as he considered going back to his father,
I could easily share in the words of Judah,
33 Sir, I am your slave. Please let me stay here in place of Benjamin and let him return home with his brothers. 34 How can I face my father if Benjamin isn’t with me? I couldn’t bear to see my father in such sorrow.
As we regret the past, as we wish we, as we pray like Judah did, as we grieve over the damage of our sin, we hear God respond, “no…”
It is hard to hear God answer no…
So hard we don’t always hear, “my son, that is not necessary….”
But our Brother can..
It is actually impossible to take care of what we’ve broken and shattered. We can’t take the place of the joy, we can’t somehow sacrifice the life we have to restore that which is broken.
But that isn’t why God says “no”
He says no because He had already taken care of the sin that caused Judah’s grief, and anxiety. The brother he thinks dead, he is standing before. What his and his brother’s sin threw away, the love of their Father is now going to be restored.
This is the moment that is the perfect example of Advent. We stand before the King who is about to be revealed, trying to do with our guilt and shame, trying to figure out how to face the eternal consequences for our actions. How can we face God our father, when the relationships of our past mean our brother, our sister, isn’t going to be with us? It is as this moment we understand the power of Advent and the greater moment of Christmas…
We really need to hear what God has already said, we need to hear it with all our heart and all our mind, and all our soul.
“Let it be done for you as you believe. By Jesus’ command I tell you, Your sins are forgiven, and what was done for evil, God will use for good. This is promised in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN!”
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The Relationships of Christmas Present
Genesis 45:-18a
† I.H.S. †
May the grace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be so revealed in your life, that broken relationships you deal with today are healed.
A Quick Review of the past
Last week, we looked at relationships of Christmas past, and we walked in the footsteps of Judah and his brothers. We saw the desire, and the inability to make up for the sins we’ve committed against others.
We had to see the only hope to deal with the guilt, the shame, the separation was to put it into God’s hands.
So now we come to the Relationships of Christmas Present…
In this moment!
Instead of walking in Judah’s footsteps, we have to exchange them for Joseph’s and deal with the pain of relationships in the present, those relationships that will not be celebrated at Christmas, because sin has again divided us.
Not our sin this time… “theirs!”
You know who I am talking about, every one of us has someone who, if they walked in the room right now, we would not want to interact with them. We may not be angry at them, we may not be burying our resentment, or at least we tell ourselves this. But the pain is there. The heartache, and the discomfort when they walk in the room.
Joseph’s attitude:
If only we could see them, as Joseph saw his brothers, if only we could weep at the division between us, if only we could ask them to “please come closer,” and urge them as he did, “don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for hurting me this way,”
If only our grief caused by their sin was able to be dealt with in that way!
If only… we could love more than we hurt…
if only… the relationship meant more to us… than our pain.
My God, there are days where I wish I had the strength of Joseph’s faith…
But I do not…and if I read scripture right, neither do any of you.
The Key To Healing Relationships of Christmas Present
There is only one way to be able to generate that much strength, that much desire to see things “made right” in the relationship with us, that someone shattered. It is walking in Joseph’s steps and seeing what God has done, not in their life, but in ours.
That is where Joseph looks and sees God at work in His life. He sees God at work, as He promised to be, making everything work for good for those who love Him, those He’s called to be His own people.
It isn’t so much that we make the decision to love them, that we will ourselves to give up the pain and the hurt, that we willingly just give Jesus the resentment and pain.
It fades away, in the light of His glory, it fades away as we see the manger, and realize He is with us, it fades away.. as we see the cross, and realize He lived and died and rose again… because He loves us.
and there, in that moment, we find ourselves, empowered and driven by the Holy Spirit, going to those who’ve sinned against us, with tears in our eyes, saying,
It is I, your brother, don’t be afraid, don’t be upset with yourselves, God is at work here…
And then be amazed, for the peace of God which passes all understanding envelops you all, and guards your heart and soul and mind. AMEN!
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The relationships of Christmas Future
Genesis 45:16-21-25-28
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace mercy and peace of God enable you to see the result of God reconciling us all into Himself.
The Journey Past and Present
This advent we’ve already looked at the Relationships of Christmas Past, those times where we have not been there, the times where our sin has dramatically impacted relationships, much as Judah and His brothers betrayed and sinned against Joseph.
And we saw how Christ did what Judah could not do, taking on the punishment we deserved. Knowing that gave us hope for the relationships we broke in the past.
Then we looked at the Relationships of Christmas Present, and saw the relationships shattered by the sins of others.
We saw Joseph find the grace that comes when we realize God is at work in our lives, and that all things work out for God, even the things that people planned ot hurt us.
Now we get into the look for relationships in our future.., including those of the past and present. It is the hope to which each of the previous weeks pointed to, it is the hope of advent, it is the hope that parable of scrooge pointed to as well – relationships healed by the power of God
What the King has in mind
When the news gets to the Pharaoh and his leaders that Joseph’s brothers had come, the reaction is amazing. Here is how it reads, “When it was told in the palace that Joseph’s brothers had come, the king and his officials were happy” But “happy” is then seen in the reaction – “go get them, I will give them the nest of everything. They can eat and enjoy it all!”
That sounds more like the meaning behind the Hebrew there… which ranges from “it was very good, to delightful. Pharaoh was excited = you see his reaction – give them the best Joseph – the best of whatever I got!
That’s a picture of heaven, not the getting the best stuff, but the excitement of the Pharaoh is the excitement that God has, in seeing us “come home!” It is the regathering, the people that matter to God, His people whom Jesus died for, finally ending up where they belong!
It’s that joy we need to see tonight, the joy of God as He sees us as we are in Christ – reconciled together.
That is why Pharaoh includes this instruction as well, “They can leave their possessions behind,”
The more we understand God’s delight, His joy for His people to dwell in His presence, the more this makes sense. We don’t have to bring all the baggage we carry in this life!
Pharaoh provided everything they needed, just get in the chariots and come!
This is what God does for us, providing everything we need to dwell with Him, not just during the hard times of this life, but for eternity.
But the excitement – go get the people – bring them!
This amazing Pharaoh is as much a picture of God our Father as the Pharaoh 425 years later will not be!
I Must GO – His Son is really alive!
Up to this point in the story, Jacob has been distressed and depressed. And when the moving chariots get there, I love his reaction,
“My son Joseph must really be alive, and I will get to see him before I die.”
It reminds me of Joseph’s words,
26 And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! 27 I will see him for myself. Yes, I will see him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought! Job 19:26-27 (NLT2)
What makes the difference here is the interaction, Jacob will see his son, Job will see God, we will encounter Jesus,.
A son, once thought dead is found alive, and not only is he alive, but he is reigning and sits at the right hand of the King, Jacob’s life changed dramatically.
Just as Jesus has risen, and not is He alive, He reigns at the right hand of the Father, our lives have changed, reconciled, restored. He is truly risen!
Therefore, We ARE RISEN INDEED,
And when we see Him every relationship will be healed, will be made whole, as all dwell with the Lord, who has forgiven our sins, and united us all in the death and resurrection of Jesus. AMEN!
The Relationships of Christmas Past
The Relationships of
Christmas Past
Genesis 44:30-44
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace of God, our Father, and our Lord Jesus convince you of the healing that is indeed happening in your life and in the lives of those you knew in Christmases past…
Haunted
I can’t imagine, as Judah stands before the brother he does not recognize, the heartache that he feels. His heart and soul flashbacks to the look in his father’s eyes when they told him of Joseph’s death. Of watching his dad weep for months,
How it must have eaten him up, even though he knew his brother probably wasn’t dead, but simply a slave somewhere.
Still, he had to look down and see his father, wracked with tears, and live with his father’s overprotective nature toward Joseph’s younger brother, the only joy this broken man had…
Judah then considers having to break the news to his father, that his other son would be lost to him as well. His heart breaks, as guilt and shame have so weakened him, he realizes he can’t go back, he can’t watch his father die, because of the sin he has committed.
Surely he is haunted far more than Bob Marley or the most of the ghost of Christmas past ever could.
Our Relationships of Christmas Past
For many of us, the holidays are a challenge. We miss many dear friends and family. Some are memories form our youth, like those we looked up to have past away, some of them decades ago.
Others are missing for a different reason.
Our sin.
Maybe we didn’t sell them into slavery, but the effect is much the same. We never, ever, want to bump into each other, for the sin that divides us is too grievous. Like Judah, thinking of the pain he caused his father (not even thinking of Joseph), we can’t live with it. I can’t imagine bearing up with that kind of pain for decades….
Or can I?
I think back to the relationships of Christmases past, and know the absence of lives that brought joy, people I had fun with, that won’t be there this year without a miracle. If I think about it, I understand all to well the pain that Judah felt, as he considered going back to his father,
I could easily share in the words of Judah,
33 Sir, I am your slave. Please let me stay here in place of Benjamin and let him return home with his brothers. 34 How can I face my father if Benjamin isn’t with me? I couldn’t bear to see my father in such sorrow.
As we regret the past, as we wish we, as we pray like Judah prayed, as we grieve over the damage of our sin, we hear God respond, “no…”
It is hard to hear God answer no…
So hard we don’t always hear, “my son, that is not necessary….”
But our Brother can…
It is actually impossible to take care of what we’ve broken and shattered. We can’t take the place of the joy, we can’t somehow sacrifice the life we have to restore that which is broken.
But that isn’t why God says, “no.”
He says no because He had already taken care of the sin that caused Judah’s grief and anxiety. The brother he thinks dead, he is standing before. What his and his brother’s sin threw away, the love of their Father is now going to be restored.
This is the moment that is the perfect example of Advent. We stand before the King, who is about to be revealed, trying to do with our guilt and shame, trying to figure out how to face the eternal consequences for our actions. How can we face God our father, when the relationships of our past mean our brother, our sister, isn’t going to be with us? It is at this moment we understand the power of Advent and the greater moment of Christmas…
We really need to hear what God has already said, we need to listen to it with all our heart and all our mind, and all our soul.
“Let it be done for you as you believe. By Jesus’ command, I tell you, Your sins are forgiven, and what was done for evil, God will use for good. This is promised in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN!”
Offended! Renewal or Revenge: I beg you…choose wisely
God, who am I?
Devotional Thought of the Day
9 I appeal to you, instead, on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus, 10 appeal to you for my son, Onesimus. I fathered him while I was in chains. 11 Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me. 12 I am sending him back to you as a part of myself. 13 I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place. 14 But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will. 15 For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time, so that you might get him back permanently, 16 no longer as a •slave, but more than a slave—as a dearly loved brother. He is especially so to me, but even more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, accept him as you would me. 18 And if he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.19 I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—not to mention to you that you owe me even your own self. Philemon 9-19 HCSB
187 Listen to me carefully and echo my words: Christianity is Love; getting to know God is a most positive experience; concern for others—the apostolate—is not an extra luxury, the task of a few. Now that you know this, fill yourself with joy, because your life has acquired a completely different meaning, and act in consequence.
Christianity is Love, or better said Jesus Christ is love.
In recent weeks, there have been some issues where people have been gravely hurt, situations in which they feel they have been offended, gravely offended. Some of these things are sinful, even including some that are considered abominations,
Yet Christianity is love, St Josemaria reminds us.
Our mission, the mission of the church and everyone who is a part of her is found in loving others, to have the positive experience of being concerned for them. This isn’t easy, this mission of ours. It calls us to love the unlovable, to be concerned for the very people who hurt us, whom we pin the blame for our brokenness on, looking for someone to take the fall
Yet Christ is love.
This morning, my reading plan hit the book of Philemon, one of the greatest encouragements to love a neighbor found in scripture. Paul is encouraging Philemon to love more than the betrayal, to love more than he was sinned against, to love more than justice, in fact, this love flies in the face of civil justice.
Christ is love. Imitate Him!
Paul so desires Philemon to love the escaped slave, he is willing to risk having Philemon disobey him, willing to risk a betrayal. He so desires to teach Philemon about love, he is willing to sacrifice the one he wants Philemon to love.
The one who betrayed Philemon, the one who hurt him, stole his property, made him the object of ridicule.
Paul wants Philemon to love the most unlovable person in Philemon’s life.
And he is willing to risk everything to teach this important lesson, even as he encourages Philemon with just as much energy, reminding Philemon how much he is loved. Even reminding Philemon how much mercy has blessed him.
Christ is Love!
This is our calling, this is our way of life, this is a level of joy when we find that in Christ we can love the unlovable when we can love the one who has betrayed us when we can show mercy even as we show mercy.
What a joy to do that which we cannot do on our own. To so depend on the power of the Holy Spirit who comforts us, who gives us the ability to do what we cannot.
Christ in us! LOVE!
Take a moment, think of those who you would struggle to love, whether a famous person, or a family member or a neighbor. Hear those who have loved you when you were unlovable, pointing you to Jesus, and pray that someone would do the same for those whose actions and words hurt you, bring them to the Lord who will renew their lives.
Lord have mercy on us…..all!
Escriva, Josemaria. Furrow (Kindle Locations 997-1000). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Man-colds, Suffering, Resentment, and the Abundant Life
Devotional Thought of the Day
26 Look at the birds: they do not plant seeds, gather a harvest and put it in barns; yet your Father in heaven takes care of them! Aren’t you worth much more than birds? 27 Can any of you live a bit longer by worrying about it? 28 “And why worry about clothes? Look how the wild flowers grow: they do not work or make clothes for themselves. 29 But I tell you that not even King Solomon with all his wealth had clothes as beautiful as one of these flowers. 30 It is God who clothes the wild grass—grass that is here today and gone tomorrow, burned up in the oven. Won’t he be all the more sure to clothe you? What little faith you have! 31 “So do not start worrying: ‘Where will my food come from? or my drink? or my clothes?’ 32 (These are the things the pagans are always concerned about.) Your Father in heaven knows that you need all these things. 33 Instead, be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things. 34 So do not worry about tomorrow; it will have enough worries of its own. There is no need to add to the troubles each day brings. Matthew 6:26-34 (TEV)
The teaching of Christ even requires that we forgive injuries, and extends the law of love to include every enemy, according to the command of the New Law: “You have heard that it was said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy. But I say to you: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate you” (Matt. 5:43–44).
You are not happy because you make everything revolve around yourself as if you were always the centre: you have a stomach-ache, or you are tired, or they have said this or that… Have you ever tried thinking about Him, and through Him, about others?
There are a bunch of pictures on the internet this week, making fun of men who are suffering colds. Harsh and cruel to see when I am suffering with a cold. I thought I was over it, until this morning when I coughed so hard I strained a muscle under my collarbone. With a significant level of Pain, I am at work, trudging along when I came across the quote in blue above.
Ouch. Now my shoulder and my conscience hurt.
But the idea brings to light something I have been realizing more and more in the last few days.
We don’t’ take suffering well! We wil do anything avoid it, and if we can’t avoid it, we want peopel to share in it, as if their pity will somehow minimize the effect it has on us. If we complain enough, it is possible to get so addicted to the care, to the attention, that we will subconsciously make even the littlest inconveniences, critical.
It is amazing though, what can be accomplished through the suffering, even when through the times where we are ruled by our anxiety, when we pray and keep our focus on is Jesus. When we realise the love of God our Father, who cares for us. It is then we find the focus that enables us to push through, to care for ourselves, but also to care for others.
This is what the gospel reading is communicating to us. Know God cares, and if He watches out for us. more than He does for daisies, or birds or anything else. He cares for you.
Which brings me to topic #2 for the day, which is mentioned int he green quote.
We can make our emotional and spiritual injuries all about us as well, compared to being all about, well us. It may be the words stung us, or could hurt the people we care about. We wallow in the injustice like we just lie there in our bathrobe with a box of kleenex and a bottle of ginger ale, watching the movies or shows we have dvr’d months ago. Instead of being flooded with phlegm, we are overwhelmed by our hurt, anger, and resentment. We feel sorry for ourselves, and we want others to feel sorry for us as well. we go over and over the story, remembering the pain being greater with every re-telling, and we convince ourselves that this event, those words, that moment in time was why we suffer throughout our lives.
What we need is the gospel to free us, we need to look at the suffering and realize it is nothing compared to the life we have in Christ, and abundant life that resentment may cloud for the moment, but that Christ’s love and mercy burns through, healing us, reconciling us to Him, and therefore to the one who is also forgiven because of the cross.
Our abundant life isn’t wrecked by a cold (even when the cough causes us to pull a muscle. Even when the memories of injuries seem so dominant. For these things cannot separate you from the love you have in Christ.
Just look to Jesus and cry out, “Lord have mercy!”, and be confident that He has kept His promise…
Catholic Church. (2011). Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: Gaudium Et Spes. In Vatican II Documents. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). Furrow (Kindle Locations 531-534). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
